Keynote 09 features

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

We’ve just fired up the iWork 09 trial and are working through things we’ve found.

The quick list for now is:

Theme selector looks a bit different, and you can now scrub the slide layouts. It’s still not as handy as something like the Pages selector, but at least the scrubbing is nice. You can also resize the thumbnails up to 360×270 (we cracked open Keynote and checked. The downer is, thisÂ makes all 3rd party themes look blurry in the previews)

New Inspector icons, slightly more…puffy

Ability to require a password to open the file (this was a good idea in conjunction with iwork.com)

Magic Move. This moves an object from ONE slide onto the next slide

New Flash Bulbs object build

New Text Transitions text on one slide into text on the next (Anagram, Shimmer, Sparkle, Swing)

New Object effects appear to wipe all objects from a slide and then transitions seamlessly to the next slide (Object Push, Object Zoom, Perspective, Revolve)

New object builds Flash Bulbs and Lens Flare

New chart builds (Crane, Radial, Rotate, Rotate & Grow, Z Axis)Â

New text align option for tables that puts numbers on the left and text on the right (we’re not sure how it works yet)

Advanced Gradient fills. FINALLY. Multiple colors and radials.

New Lines function-looks like they pulled a few of the fancy lines out of the picture frame function and into the Lines function.

All chart types now show as sub drop down under Object menu in tool bar

New “Make Motion Path from Shape” function (select 2 shapes, one becomes the path, the other the object that moves on the path)

Copying and pasting a chart from a saved Numbers document to a Keynote document links it (we tested it!). Changes to the Numbers document are available for syncing only after the document is saved again.

New in the prefs:

Keynote files are no longer a package by default, you must choose that in the preferences (we assume this is so they upload properly to iwork.com)

presenter display can now show Build markers. Little blue dots show how many builds and disappear when the build is complete

While it doesn’t appear in the prefs, the new Presenter Display has a hidden bar that sits at the top of the presenter screen. Bump the top and it drops. In it are a slide selector button, a black button, an options menu (with several options including customize the view) and a help button. Clicking the Slide selector drops down a scrollable row of your slides. Double clicking a slide hides the bar and triggers the slide. This is much nicer than the old selector (and larger too)

New Keynote Remote ability, ties in with .99 app in the App store. We bought it…for now, stick with StageHand, it’s WAY better, though it may not work with 09 yet)

Auto Correct now adds ability to “automatically use spell checker suggestions) and they made the symbol and text substitution box larger so more items show in it.

Other new things we’ve discovered:

You now have the option to save as a PPT file from the Save window, as well as the export window

New “Reduce File Size” option which dumps originals of things like photos if you’ve edited them. You can also choose to apply this to a single image to reduce it.

New “Show slide numbers on all slides” option

New Rehearse button you can add to the tool bar

New iwork.com button you can add to the tool bar

New Connect button you can add to the tool bar (this is the flow chart shape connector line)

New Send To button/drop down you can add to the tool bar

New Play menu has been added. Play, Rehearse, Record have all been moved here from the View menu.

Customize Presenter display option has been added to the new Play menu, saving a trip to the prefs

New Share menu has been added, including connections to iwork.com and all the send to options.

Export has been moved to the Share menu from the Edit menu

Option to reduce the file size ofÂ embeddedÂ audio files one at a time

We’ll add more as we find them (we’re sure there’s more in there)

So what’s missing?

Web View has been removed

Flash Export has been removed

Did Apple really leave the audio alone AGAIN? Still no multi-slide audio features?

Still can’t have text links change color when they’ve been visited (a MUST HAVE feature for folks building Jeopardy games)

For those of us who build themes, there’s still no way to punch holes in a shape (to make custom overlays). Thankfully SVG2Key still exists, and for most things, regular masks and media placeholders still work fine.

We suspect no QT VR support still (it’s likely we’ll never see that now)

I asked if Lines had become like Frames where there’s different lines for different themes. Unfortunately, not. All themes use the same 5-6 strokes. They DO look great, though 🙂 They were used to good effect in Apple’s test presentation. (That I wish I could have some time to take apart!)

I was speaking to one of the developers. He seemed fairly forthcoming about the shortcomings involved when using frames (specifically regarding copying and pasting to different themes). I asked about the Lines and referenced the Frames specifically (how you could see different frames in different themes).

I think they will add more lines as time goes on, but we’ll see once we get a look at the XML.

Jool – Sorry to hear that, my test was on a two slides presentation. I’ll try with longer ones. In the meantime, here is an easy workaround for the problem of missing comments. Simple – works great. Minimal post-production.

I can’t believe they pulled “Web View.” Does anyone have any idea why? This was a fantastically useful feature for kiosk mode presentations that run daily, ensuring that a company website was always up-to-date. This isn’t feasible with simple screen shots.

Just an update on my qtz problems. This bug could be restricted to current MacBook Pro models with the graphics switched to the faster GeForce 9600M GT processor. I can play those Quartz Compositions in Keynote 5 with the graphics dumbed down to the GeForce 9400M.

I am not completely sold on Keynote ’09. Is there a way to import the omitted slide transitions from Keynote ’08 to ’09? I have opened a presentation created with Keynote ’08 in ’09 and the older slide transitions work. Omitting options is not necessarily an “upgrade”.

Why hasn’t Apple created a Keynote Player?; the options given to export a presentation has many flaws. I am still using the trial version and doubt I will purchase the “upgrade”. The new bells and whistles are attractive, but as a user of Keynote ’08 (and ’06)–Apple should respect their customer base.

I couldn’t get the new themes (or any theme) to display in the theme chooser. It’s still a very slow program, compared to Powerpoint. I’m sticking with 8. I’m getting sick of continually updating programs.

Does this new blue-dots build feature allow you to see all of the slide you’re presenting? I’m a university lecturer and the fact I can only see one build that’s coming up after the one I’m currently on drives me INSANE. It is the single most glaring omission of a feature from Keynote.

IT simply tells you how many are left, no more blue dots means no more builds left. No idea why they didn’t make some kind of finished slide preview. Another option would be a feature that dims all the elements in the presenter view but shows them all at least. Then brightens them as the builds happen. That might be cool…alas, no one consulted me before they released K09 🙂

I am trying to build slides all with copyright info in the master but when I use revolve in transition it also revolves the copyright info on the slide rather than just the graphics is there a way anyone knows off to embed the text so that it is left alone when doing object transitions? Thanks for the help otherwise I would encourage anyone to move to 09 the magic move transition alone makes the investment worthwhile!

The lack of a flash support is a real disappointment. First the IPhone and now keynote. I guess Steve Jobs does not like Flash. Probably for good reason seeing that Flash is quickly becoming a cross-platform environment. Anyone know a workaround KN > Quicktime > IMovie > Flash perhaps?

09 seems very buggy to me after a week of testing. I’m running the Keynote 09 trial, on a G4 laptop and a G5 tower. All looked good for a few days as I gradually moved important presentations to 09 and began trying the new transitions and builds, which I liked a lot. But then I started getting “missing file” warnings, and when moving a complete presentation, (carefully saved from the laptop using “copy audio and movies into document”) to the tower for editing, there were a bunch of images missing. More seemingly disappeared as I worked on the corrupted file, only a “?” mark where the image (or short QT movie) had formerly been located. I’ve repeated this issue with other presentations/different slides/movies, and am now moving back to my earlier version of Keynote until a patch comes out.

we are having some issues on keynote09 saving from an AFP server. we cannot make a copy by doing File->SaveAs and Sometimes it will not let us save the file by hitting apple+s. Plus we cannot make a copy on slides, generates and error saying “an error has occured. Please quit and Rerun Keynote again” Is anyone has been experiencing this issue?

Is there a way to view an embedded audio file name in Keynote? I could do this in Powerpoint, but cannot figure out once the file is imported, how to find its name if I want to check which version I have playing in the slide. Also, being able to manually start the audio file would be nice as well (like I can in PowerPoint)

What use is Keynote 5?
I have just downloaded the 30 day trial and spent some time putting together a slideshow with audio but this can only be viewed by some one using Keynote???
I tried exported to all the different options Powerpoint/Quicktime/PDF etc. but none of them retain all the work i have done (transitions transparency text effects timings, so unless i send it to someone with a Mac and Keynote then it seems a waste of time or have i missed something?
Mel.

I get the audio and other files missing when I export to Flash in Keynote 08. Any clues?
Keynot09 not exporting to Flash is a definite disappointment. Instead of improving it, Apple removed it altogether. If not perfect, it was still ok for creating small flash things, which made it handy tool!! I don’t know why Apple does some things. I call them wrong decisions. Just like they removed firewire port on new MacBooks and then more recently had to re-add them. But fact is many people ended up buying ones without a firewire which sucks! I wish Apple would soon add a better flash export on 09 and send a free update!!

Hi,
using keynote 09 on a mac book pro 17″ with osx 10.4.11
Making a great live show in keynote with sound effects added to the slides. However, when i’m changingin things, something goed wrong and all the sound just become distorted and cracle. I have to erase all the adio and start from scratch, which is anoying.
Don’t know when and why this happens but it does ( often).
I time the sounds to slides, so the sounds is heard at the transiotion or text box, not after.